Between 11am and 8pm on 9 April, Fox News replayed the footage of Saddam's statue coming down every 4.4 minutes. CNN replayed it every 7.5 minutes. The coverage of Firdos Square – which heavily implied that the statue had been pulled down by a large crowd of cheering Iraqis – suggested that the war was over. The hated dictator was symbolically ousted when his statue fell. In reality, it was not the end. The fighting was still going on. Armed engagements were underway in Baghdad and northern Iraq while the pageant was proceeding in Firdos Square.

Saddam would not be captured for another seven months. Stories abounded that he had body doubles: a German TV show suggested in 2002 that there were at least three of them. An Iraqi doctor claimed that the real Saddam had died in 1999 and had been played by doubles ever since. The Dutch researcher Florian Gottke wrote: "Saddam had already multiplied his body and extended his presence throughout the country through his statues, and by the same token, by living through the multiple living bodies of his doppelgangers he would become more than human, he would extend his presence into the realm of myth – he would even be able to survive his own assassination."

Saddam's omnipotence was an illusion, too. When the real Saddam was dragged out of the hole he had been hiding in, it was like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the curtain is pulled back. Suddenly everyone can see that the Wizard is not some all-powerful demigod, but an ordinary little man who has made his own myth. The real Saddam – scruffy, hairy and wizened – was a world away from the proud statues showing him astride rocket-powered horses.